Cells & tissues analyses

02/20/2019

The cellular characterization of every tumor is essential to understand oncological mechanisms. At different levels and with complementary methods, Institut Curie provides approaches to study molecules, proteins, organelles and cells in normal or pathological conditions, in the whole tissue or at a single cell level.

SINGLE CELL ANALYSIS

Single cell platform activities are based on droplet-based-microfluidics. This technology consists in compartmentalizing a sample in droplets at less than a cell per compartment/droplet. Biological analyses are thus individual at the single cell level. This technology dramatically reduces assay trials time, reactions volume (up to a million times compared to conventional tubes or plates assays) and costs.

Another advantage of individualizing reactions at the single cell level is to take cell diversity into account. Indeed, the very high sensitivity of the analyses in droplets allows analysing both the cells majority and the few rare cells of the sample.

Key Information:

10X Genomics Chromium 10X for ready for use Single Cell RNA Sequencing experiments
The inDrop System instrument of 1cellBio to do Single Cell RNA sequencing experiments
An evolutionary microfluidic station

FLOW CYTOMETRY

Flow cytometry platform offers a multiparametric analysis of individual cancerous cells in suspension, by quantifying multiple markers on cells coming from your project, with the option of simultaneously sorting sub-populations of interest. Our technology also allows the in-depth analysis of the tumour microenvironment. We are able to advice you on cell preparation and choice of fluorochromes and offer a full support for data acquisition and analysis. Software training (Cell Quest^TM and Flowjo^TM)

Key Information:

FACSAria III has 4 lasers (488nm, 561nm, 633nm and 355nm), which can acquire 14 fluorescence and 2 scatter parameters
One self-service AutoMACS magnetic bead-based cell sorter
One Luminex analyze

THE BIOIMAGING CELL AND TISSUE CORE FACILITY

The Bioimaging Cell and Tissue Core Facility of Institut Curie (PICT-IBiSA) gathers highly sophisticated equipment and up to date technologies in advanced microscopy and image optimization/analysis. The objective of this imaging platform is to provide to your company a full offer to characterize every type of tissue with the resolution needed. The platform is a member of FranceBioImaging consortium and is labeled as an IBISA quality platform.

Optical microscopy

Key information:

All together the equipment in light microscopy comprises in 2018 more than 40 systems:
7 confocal laser scanning microscopes (2 equipped with femtosecond pulsed laser for multiphoton excitation)
8 confocal spinning-disk systems (some equipped with laser photo-perturbation modules)
8 video-microscopes
3 3D deconvolution microscopes
2 TIRF systems (with FRAP or PALM techniques)
2 FLIM systems (TCSPC and phase modulation)
2 high-resolution structured illumination microscopes (OMX and Nikon HR-SIM)
2 optical sectioning Zeiss Apotome systems and several standard widefield microscopes for routine observation or histology.

Electron microscopy

Key information:

Cellular 2D and 3D (tomography) electron microscopy of resin-embebded samples
Cellular sample preparation (resin-embedded, immunolabelling, Tokuyasu)
2D and 3D cryo-electron microscopy of biomimetic samples
2D and 3D electron microscopy of negatively stained samples

Chemical imaging

The chemical imaging platform provide a qualitative and semiquantitative information on the distribution of chemical elements on a given sample.

Key information:

Ion mass spectroscopy imaging
Electron Energy Filtered TEM or EFTEM
Electron tomography
Chemical mapping by TEM.